Why Thunderbolt cables will be expensive until 2013

Competition hasn't yet led to lowered prices, but things are changing.

Sumitomo's distinctive black Thunderbolt cables aren't being sold directly in the US.

Chris Foresman

Intel's Thunderbolt high-speed interconnect has been shipping for over a year now, and new vendors have been announcing products compatible with the standard ever since. One sticking point, however, has been that Thunderbolt devices require an expensive $50 cable—only available from Apple until recently. And unfortunately, prices aren't coming down any time soon.

While other vendors are now offering their own Thunderbolt cables, prices have mostly stayed the same—in fact, some have gone up. We found this surprising; typically more vendors offering competing products leads to lower prices. And as the high cable price represents a fairly high barrier to entry for Thunderbolt devices, it relegates the standard to niche, early-adopter territory.

This isn't likely to change in the near future. Our research shows that for the rest of 2012, Thunderbolt cables are going to remain in the $45-60 price range. Prices aren't likely to drop noticeably until early 2013, when second-generation silicon for Thunderbolt's active cabling becomes available in production quantities.

The current landscape

Belkin, Elgato, and Kanex are some of the latest vendors offering Thunderbolt cables to work with a growing number of drives, docks, and other devices coming to market. But in many cases, the cables are more expensive than Apple's $50 cable. Kanex offers its own 2m cable for $60. Elgato, which recently released a portable Thunderbolt SSD, sells a 0.5m cable to go along with it, also $60. The only "cheaper" cable out there is a 1m branded one Belkin offers to go along with its upcoming Thunderbolt Express Dock for $45.

Besides Apple, the only volume supplier of Thunderbolt cables currently seems to be Japanese electrical cable manufacturer Sumitomo. Intel has been using the distinctive black version of the cables in demonstrations throughout the year, including at CES and Computex. We found Sumitomo's cables available from Amazon Japan in sizes from 0.3m to 3m, for the equivalent of $48-$62. Its 2m cable, available in white or black, costs $56 (plus shipping from Japan).

A Sumitomo representative told Ars that the company has no plans to retail its cables in the US; instead, it is partnering with local vendors to brand and distribute the cables. The Elgato and Belkin cables appear to be made by Sumitomo, though neither company would confirm that to us. Kanex's cable appears to be manufactured by another OEM.

Change in motion

All these cables have one thing in common, according to John Mitchell, marketing manager for signal processing chip maker Intersil. "All of them are based on the Gennum transceiver, what we call first-gen cable," Mitchell explained. That transceiver—now manufactured by Semtech, which acquired Gennum in March—is the same one used in Apple's cable.

The chip is built using silicon germanium, "an expensive semiconductor process typically used for telecom applications," Mitchell told Ars. It's likely that Intel and Apple chose the Semtech part because it was either an already existing part that fit the requirements for Thunderbolt's high 10Gbps bi-directional data rate, or Semtech had something similar that was easily adaptable.

In addition to the transceiver, the current reference design also requires a separate microcontroller, as well as power management and voltage regulation chips to deliver the 3V data signals and 15V optional power supply for bus-powered devices. Essentially, there are four integrated circuits (IC) at either end of a Thunderbolt cable.

"Active cables need clock and data recovery chips on either end, even for optical cables," Mitchell said. "This makes Thunderbolt very robust—signal is cleaned up by the cable, even if a device is 'noisy.'"

Combined with relatively high-quality copper cable, Thunderbolt quickly becomes rather expensive equipment. For comparison, passive cables (such as those used for HDMI or USB) cost under $10 for a 2m cable.

But Mitchell said that his company has a solution to the problem currently in the pipeline and set to ship in volume in the latter part of this year. What Intersil calls an "Active Cable IC Solution for Thunderbolt Technology" appears to be the only complete turnkey solution we could find among manufacturers selling ICs for Thunderbolt. It combines the microcontroller and transceiver into a single signal processing chip, and combines power management and voltage regulators into a single power management chip. This cuts the number of required ICs from four to two.

Enlarge/ Intersil's active Thunderbolt cable solution reduces the number of necessary ICs from four to two.

The chips are manufactured on a lower cost, 40nm CMOS process, improving yields and lowering costs significantly. The 40nm process also dissipates less heat, reducing the need for bulky heat sinking within the cable plug.

The chipset also uses Intersil's patented "cable compensation" techniques, which account for signal skew and dispersion within the copper conductors. "We've been designing around these problems for data center applications, by using advanced equalization and cable impairment correction," Mitchell said. Bringing the technology to Thunderbolt will allow cable manufacturers to use a lower-grade cable while still maintaining 10Gbps throughput.

In addition to these improvements, Intersil's chipset includes features like integrated error-rate testers and switching loopbacks, all designed to aid in automated testing. "These features help cable assemblers test the cables during the manufacturing process, streamlining the workflow," Mitchell said.

"Our solution is half the chips, half the size, uses half the power, and cheaper conductors can be used. By the end of the year, cables will be less expensive."

That news bodes well for the Thunderbolt ecosystem, which will begin expanding this year as a new wave of Thunderbolt-equipped Macs and PCs work their way into consumers' hands. "It's pretty much been an Apple thing with a few drives," Mitchell told Ars of the current landscape. "But with Ivy Bridge and Intel's new Thunderbolt controllers, the rest of this year is going be very interesting."

Promoted Comments

People need to stop seeing Thunderbolt and USB 3 as competing technologies. (I mostly blame Apple for this, as they released their first TB Macs around the same time everybody else introduced USB 3.)

Thunderbolt is basically an external PCIe bus, it's needlessly overkill for many uses that USB 3 will do just fine (and with plain inexpensive cables!), but very useful for others, like external docks or GPUs, where USB 3 is not low-level enough.

Now that's for 10G Ethernet, not Thunderbolt, but a lot of the electrical challenges still apply when transmitting data outside of the device in a sometimes-hostile environment.

(Also, that article also addresses some of the work needed to refine successive generations of a given interconnect. The original single-port 10G card consumed 25 watts, and that was just at one end of the cable. A single 10G Ethernet channel meant 50W of power end-to-end, and if you have multiple hundreds of those in a data center you can do the math...)

138 Reader Comments

I looked into moving some personal stuff to TB (Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex harddisks) from USB 3.0 for s***s and grins, and holy crap it was expensive. Glad to know it's still going to be expensive for a while.

This would be a non-issue if it was an open standard like USB where anyone can develop controllers for it.

I honestly don't see Thunderbolt succeeding in the market for the same reason FireWire didn't. It wasn't an open standard that anyone could just adopt and begin making their own controllers for. You'll never see Thunderbolt support on AMD's chipsets because Intel is the only one allowed to make them. If they open up the standard like they did with USB, I think it'll actually gain a lot more adoption.

Can't you put the ICs in the devices? You know, where all the other ICs are? And once they figure out how to do it with an IC just at one end of the cable, can't you put the $20 IC into the computer and that's that? Maybe you need the signal before it passes the plug.

Now that's for 10G Ethernet, not Thunderbolt, but a lot of the electrical challenges still apply when transmitting data outside of the device in a sometimes-hostile environment.

(Also, that article also addresses some of the work needed to refine successive generations of a given interconnect. The original single-port 10G card consumed 25 watts, and that was just at one end of the cable. A single 10G Ethernet channel meant 50W of power end-to-end, and if you have multiple hundreds of those in a data center you can do the math...)

This would be a non-issue if it was an open standard like USB where anyone can develop controllers for it.

I honestly don't see Thunderbolt succeeding in the market for the same reason FireWire didn't. It wasn't an open standard that anyone could just adopt and begin making their own controllers for. You'll never see Thunderbolt support on AMD's chipsets because Intel is the only one allowed to make them. If they open up the standard like they did with USB, I think it'll actually gain a lot more adoption.

I am afraid, you're right. I really was disappointed to see FireWire lagging the support USB had despite the quality of the interface. The files transfers were impressive comparing to USB (at least in 2006) and I used the FireWire interface for networking my macs because my ISP router only had a single Ethernet port and no wifi. Gosh 2006 seems so long ago!

So, the right question is: which technology would be more open while still proposing the same file transfer rates than thunderbolt?100G Ethernet?

Can't you put the ICs in the devices? You know, where all the other ICs are? And once they figure out how to do it with an IC just at one end of the cable, can't you put the $20 IC into the computer and that's that? Maybe you need the signal before it passes the plug.

The problem is it puts a connector in the way between the signal processing chips and the cable. This makes the job even harder (look at how much more complex and power hungry 10Gig Ethernet over copper is, which uses dumb cables). Also this would interfere with the ability to swap copper and optical cables transparently, not that there are any optical cables available at the moment (and who knows how much they will cost initially).

This would be a non-issue if it was an open standard like USB where anyone can develop controllers for it.

I honestly don't see Thunderbolt succeeding in the market for the same reason FireWire didn't. It wasn't an open standard that anyone could just adopt and begin making their own controllers for. You'll never see Thunderbolt support on AMD's chipsets because Intel is the only one allowed to make them. If they open up the standard like they did with USB, I think it'll actually gain a lot more adoption.

I am afraid, you're right. I really was disappointed to see FireWire lagging the support USB had despite the quality of the interface. The files transfers were impressive comparing to USB (at least in 2006) and I used the FireWire interface for networking my macs because my ISP router only had a single Ethernet port and no wifi. Gosh 2006 seems so long ago!

So, the right question is: which technology would be more open while still proposing the same file transfer rates than thunderbolt?100G Ethernet?

I get really tired of the comparison (firewire = thunderbolt). I get that maybe to you thunderbolt only will be used for file transfers but it's been designed for so much more with the including of PCIe and DisplayPort stuff (sound and audio). For many of us the application of being able to use it essentially as a full laptop dock connection as Apple does is very desirable. In the future with better version of Thunderbolt you'll also be able to add an external graphics gard to play games with (I've heard mixed results on doing this now, with some claiming it's plenty of bandwidth and others saying it's not enough).

No thunderbolt is different and will gladly replace the mini displayport connection on laptops, living happily next to USB 3.

Can't you put the ICs in the devices? You know, where all the other ICs are? And once they figure out how to do it with an IC just at one end of the cable, can't you put the $20 IC into the computer and that's that? Maybe you need the signal before it passes the plug.

The problem is it puts a connector in the way between the signal processing chips and the cable. This makes the job even harder (look at how much more complex and power hungry 10Gig Ethernet over copper is, which uses dumb cables). Also this would interfere with the ability to swap copper and optical cables transparently, not that there are any optical cables available at the moment (and who knows how much they will cost initially).

Exactly. Sumitomo has optical cables that will be available this quarter, starting at 10m lengths, and can't transmit power. But don't expect them to be any cheaper than current 2m cables.

This would be a non-issue if it was an open standard like USB where anyone can develop controllers for it.

I honestly don't see Thunderbolt succeeding in the market for the same reason FireWire didn't. It wasn't an open standard that anyone could just adopt and begin making their own controllers for. You'll never see Thunderbolt support on AMD's chipsets because Intel is the only one allowed to make them. If they open up the standard like they did with USB, I think it'll actually gain a lot more adoption.

I am afraid, you're right. I really was disappointed to see FireWire lagging the support USB had despite the quality of the interface. The files transfers were impressive comparing to USB (at least in 2006) and I used the FireWire interface for networking my macs because my ISP router only had a single Ethernet port and no wifi. Gosh 2006 seems so long ago!100G Ethernet?

But the difference was, Intel didn't support FireWire, and so no FW ports on motherboards. Most people would have to specifically purchase FireWire cards, and so used USB instead, though it was far slower.

If Intel make the ports available on most future motherboards, Thunderbolt will see much greater adoption than FireWire ever did.

Is Intel purposely holding back the industry so it can profit (again) ?

LightPeak, the project that eventually bore the Thunderbolt port, used on-logic board optoelectronics. Unfortunately, it wasn't cost effective enough to make it into the consumer technology it was intended to be, and eventually adopted the mini DisplayPort form factor and copper technology in order to bring it to market. Some will argue Apple force Intel to do use mDP over modified USB—hello Peter!—but the USB Forum actually complained about Intel using modified ports for that purpose.

If Intel make the ports available on most future motherboards, Thunderbolt will see much greater adoption than FireWire ever did.

It's been available for some time, though integration was waiting for newer controllers that launched at the same time as Ivy Bridge for the most part. Intel REQUIRES Thunderbolt for a notebook to qualify as an ultrabook, FWIW. And a few MB vendors, including MSI, Gigabye, and Intel, have Thunderbolt on-board now.

If Intel make the ports available on most future motherboards, Thunderbolt will see much greater adoption than FireWire ever did.

It's been available for some time, though integration was waiting for newer controllers that launched at the same time as Ivy Bridge for the most part. Intel REQUIRES Thunderbolt for a notebook to qualify as an ultrabook, FWIW. And a few MB vendors, including MSI, Gigabye, and Intel, have Thunderbolt on-board now.

Intel requires Thunderbolt or USB 3.0, which any Ivy Bridge computer gets for free from the chipset.

The true value of Thunderbolt will come as it scales to 100Gbps, which USB 3.0 will never bother with. And at this point, I don't see any value in a new USB standard within 10 years (USB 2.0 when it came out still left a lot to be desired).

People need to stop seeing Thunderbolt and USB 3 as competing technologies. (I mostly blame Apple for this, as they released their first TB Macs around the same time everybody else introduced USB 3.)

Thunderbolt is basically an external PCIe bus, it's needlessly overkill for many uses that USB 3 will do just fine (and with plain inexpensive cables!), but very useful for others, like external docks or GPUs, where USB 3 is not low-level enough.

The problem with TB cables is not lack of suppliers or lack of competition. They use an inherently more expensive approach. Assuming that they will become cheap any time soon just because more vendors are entering the market seems like completely unjustified wishful thinking.

This would be a non-issue if it was an open standard like USB where anyone can develop controllers for it.

I honestly don't see Thunderbolt succeeding in the market for the same reason FireWire didn't. It wasn't an open standard that anyone could just adopt and begin making their own controllers for. You'll never see Thunderbolt support on AMD's chipsets because Intel is the only one allowed to make them. If they open up the standard like they did with USB, I think it'll actually gain a lot more adoption.

I am afraid, you're right. I really was disappointed to see FireWire lagging the support USB had despite the quality of the interface. The files transfers were impressive comparing to USB (at least in 2006) and I used the FireWire interface for networking my macs because my ISP router only had a single Ethernet port and no wifi. Gosh 2006 seems so long ago!

So, the right question is: which technology would be more open while still proposing the same file transfer rates than thunderbolt?100G Ethernet?

I get really tired of the comparison (firewire = thunderbolt). I get that maybe to you thunderbolt only will be used for file transfers but it's been designed for so much more with the including of PCIe and DisplayPort stuff...

That's because most of us don't have the self-inflicted problem that having a "PCIe cable" solves.

If some sort of cheap 100G ethernet implementation comes along, the rest of us can just get a real PCIe card for it.

Is Intel purposely holding back the industry so it can profit (again) ?

LightPeak, the project that eventually bore the Thunderbolt port, used on-logic board optoelectronics. Unfortunately, it wasn't cost effective enough to make it into the consumer technology it was intended to be,

Sony apparently managed to do it.

Quote:

and eventually adopted the mini DisplayPort form factor and copper technology in order to bring it to market. Some will argue Apple force Intel to do use mDP over modified USB—hello Peter!—but the USB Forum actually complained about Intel using modified ports for that purpose.

As was stated repeatedly in those discussions, USB-IF could complain all they wanted, but they couldn't actually do jack shit about it unless the Light Peak port was labeled as USB. They were a literal paper tiger.

It's this way with any new technology. Once China gets their hands on it, they'll make cables and sell them for pennies over the actual cost of the cable just like everything else. More often than not, the problem is GREED. Apple? You betcha! Once it's no longer an "Apple thing" it'll have a hope of catching on. Otherwise it will remain a niche interface and die a swift death within a few years like so many before it.

Though some people hate the Firewire comparisons, there is some truth to that. I have some FW devices, but only in my A/V stuff. Even worse, some FW simply doesn't play nice together (My 2011 Thinkpad FW and my Echo Audiofire12 interfaces for example) More expensive AND compatibility issues? Means short tech lifespan for you! This is why USB has endured and will continue to do so.

It's this way with any new technology. Once China gets their hands on it, they'll make cables and sell them for pennies over the actual cost of the cable just like everything else. More often than not, the problem is GREED. Apple? You betcha! Once it's no longer an "Apple thing" it'll have a hope of catching on. Otherwise it will remain a niche interface and die a swift death within a few years like so many before it.

Though some people hate the Firewire comparisons, there is some truth to that. I have some FW devices, but only in my A/V stuff. Even worse, some FW simply doesn't play nice together (My 2011 Thinkpad FW and my Echo Audiofire12 interfaces for example) More expensive AND compatibility issues? Means short tech lifespan for you! This is why USB has endured and will continue to do so.

While I will always agree that Apple are a bunch of greedy bastards, it's not really so much Apple in this case as it is Intel. Intel is the only one making these controllers hat are absolutely necessary to have in these cables. So it's Intel that is the one that gets to dictate the cost of the controllers and passes on the cost to the cable manufacturers.

This is why I don't believe Thunderbolt will gain marketshare until it's changed to an open standard like SATA or USB. I mean you've got the native USB controllers built into the chipsets from AMD and Intel. You've got third party USB controllers from the likes of NEC, VIA, etc. You have the same thing for SATA as well with third party Marvell SATA III controllers in lieu or even in addition to the native AMD and Intel SATA III controllers that are integrated into the chipset.

I'm not against Thunderbolt as a connector I'm just against how its currently implemented. The more manufacturers that can produce controllers for it, the more devices that can use it, and the less it'll cost. I have USB 3.0 ports on both my Desktop and Laptop, but it's definitely not from the Intel chipset. Same goes for the SATA III ports on my desktop MOBO since it was before Intel integrated native SATA III controllers into their chipsets.

So these prices are all as a result of Intel (and perhaps Apple to an extent since they pushed Intel to develop this) wanting to keep exclusive control over the entire process from motherboard controllers to the integrated chips within the cables as well. That doesn't help with either adoption or price, IMO.

I would assume passive cabling would work over short distances. I wonder how short exactly, though. Something like 30 cm would be quite workable for a docking station, and even 20 cm would probably be doable.

It would be nice if they had added a 2.5 Gbps mode that works over reasonable distances using passive cables, though, because a good number of applications don't need more than that.

It's this way with any new technology. Once China gets their hands on it, they'll make cables and sell them for pennies over the actual cost of the cable just like everything else. More often than not, the problem is GREED. Apple? You betcha! Once it's no longer an "Apple thing" it'll have a hope of catching on. Otherwise it will remain a niche interface and die a swift death within a few years like so many before it.

Though some people hate the Firewire comparisons, there is some truth to that. I have some FW devices, but only in my A/V stuff. Even worse, some FW simply doesn't play nice together (My 2011 Thinkpad FW and my Echo Audiofire12 interfaces for example) More expensive AND compatibility issues? Means short tech lifespan for you! This is why USB has endured and will continue to do so.

The problem is that ThunderBolt ISN'T an Apple thing. Apple certainly helped define the specs but it was built on Intel's LightPeak technology.

Apple pushed the copper move over the fibre move simply because it allowed devices to be powered which fibre cannot. However the whole technology both fibre and copper is built on PCI-E which is through and through an Intel product that also had HP, Dell, and IBM influences. Apple simply designed the connector and pushed the technology.

Incidentally USB would be nowhere had it not been for Apple so don't spew the anti-Apple retoric without understanding that this is a great thing for the advancement of the technology which allows so much to be done over one tiny little port.

Now that's for 10G Ethernet, not Thunderbolt, but a lot of the electrical challenges still apply when transmitting data outside of the device in a sometimes-hostile environment.)

Wow, that is impressive. That is far more than what we do here, and far more than what I used to do (I was involved at a grunt level when the ATM specification was being developed... I remember something like $150,000 worth of ATM gear being loaded into the back of a car to transport it for testing, and the car was only worth $10,000 ).

More often than not, the problem is GREED. Apple? You betcha! Once it's no longer an "Apple thing" it'll have a hope of catching on.

I love how people love to bitch about Apple being greedy and overpriced even when they're one of the lowest cost suppliers of a technology.

If only they'd relax their Darth Vader chokehold, anybody with a SiGe or GaAs fab in their garage will be able to knock these cables out for pennies on the dollar. No doubt they'll correctly pass one packet in six, too.

Gotta love the Thunderbolt vs. USB Death Match arguments that surface every. single. time. these. articles. are. published. Why, it's almost as if none of those posters ever bothered read any of the other comment threads!

Chips in the cables?! So a single master chip in the Host computer and a single chip in the device isn't good enough? Thunderbolt cables are a scam designed to rake in money for junk.

Compare the cost of a Thunderbolt cable against any other cable that can go anywhere near the speed. Thunderbolt is INCREDIBLY cheap by comparison. It's far cheaper than 10G Ethernet... while Thunderbolt operates at speeds of approximately 40G.

Active cables are used for two reasons:1.) Because they can compensate for the issues with the actual copper cables (the chips are tuned for the specific run)2.) Because it allows seamlessly swapping to optical cables in the future. A single port that can handle both, since copper can't handle such speeds at longer lengths.

Wow, Ars sure attracts an audience with, *ahem*, wide range of computer sophistication. It's shocking that people think that $50 for active cabling is excessive (hint, it's super cheap). It's also shocking that people don't understand that there could be a need for active cabling and further, that rather than learn, they spout in full ignorance. As others have said, if you think that Thunderbolt is expensive, be very glad that you've never had a use case that requires something like 10G ethernet.

If you can get by with USB3, that's great, enjoy, and don't feel slighted by the existence of Thunderbolt. For those of us that can use it, either now or in the near future, Thunderbolt is a very interesting technology for the desktop environment, and it's existence will eventually lead to improvements for everybody, even if you refuse to ever touch Thunderbolt, for whatever reason.

Thunderbolt is a total overkill for external desktop storage and most consumer peripherals and the devices are way too expensive. It'll remain an expensive niche product for audio/video work. It'll likely be even more niche than FireWire ever was, unless Intel does something to make the technology cheap enough. USB3 and eSATA work just fine for majority of uses.

Can't you put the ICs in the devices? You know, where all the other ICs are? And once they figure out how to do it with an IC just at one end of the cable, can't you put the $20 IC into the computer and that's that? Maybe you need the signal before it passes the plug.

The problem is it puts a connector in the way between the signal processing chips and the cable. This makes the job even harder (look at how much more complex and power hungry 10Gig Ethernet over copper is, which uses dumb cables). Also this would interfere with the ability to swap copper and optical cables transparently, not that there are any optical cables available at the moment (and who knows how much they will cost initially).

I'm waiting for someone to make active copper- or optical-specific Thunderbolt dongles that you can plug dumb cables into.

Strictly speaking, the cable isn't, but when you add all the other end-to-end hardware then TB is far cheaper than any other 10G Ethernet solution you can buy today.

I think you are cheating. You aren't really considering all of the requiremetns that go into a complete 10G deployment. If you ingore a lot of that stuff you end up with something that looks a lot more like how people are using thunderbolt. It seems a lot like comparing a SAN to a direct attached array.

Can't you put the ICs in the devices? You know, where all the other ICs are? And once they figure out how to do it with an IC just at one end of the cable, can't you put the $20 IC into the computer and that's that? Maybe you need the signal before it passes the plug.

The problem is it puts a connector in the way between the signal processing chips and the cable. This makes the job even harder (look at how much more complex and power hungry 10Gig Ethernet over copper is, which uses dumb cables). Also this would interfere with the ability to swap copper and optical cables transparently, not that there are any optical cables available at the moment (and who knows how much they will cost initially).

I'm waiting for someone to make active copper- or optical-specific Thunderbolt dongles that you can plug dumb cables into.

Yes. It would be cool to be able to exploit the fiber that I already have without the need to take out another mortgage in order to do it.

Putting the chips in the cable doesn't make it superior, it just makes more money for the cable and chip manufacturers. Why put a chip in each device when you can sell 2 or 4 in every cable? It's about fleecing the customer plain and simple. It's the same as Apple proprietary cables with its patented and chipped connectors like Maglock.

While gullible fools swallow lies about about HDMI gold plating, oxygen free copper and data collisons there will still be morons spending 50 bucks or more on HDMI cables when a $10 cable will do the same job. Thunderbolt is a natural extension of this scam.

As mavellous as the connection speeds may be, it's still a piece of copper that carries the data. Chipping the cable, whatever the reason, was unnecessary from a technology standpoint. It makes no difference if the chip sits a few millimetres inside the plug or the socket side of the circuit. If you believe otherwise, I have a bag of "Magic" beans I'd like to sell you for an arm and a leg.